How are you? What’s new? What’s good in your world?
The online community space is not yet a perfect, intuitive endeavour. Maybe it will never be, and maybe it shouldn’t be. That friction gets us to go outside and spend time with each other in the flesh, which is, of course, preferable, but sometimes (and in my experience) our people exist across oceans, so we have to make do with an imperfect, haphazard and hybrid form of connecting.
Having said all that (said in my thoughts through my fingers, which really is a kind of telepathy imo), I want to invite you to join me for my 6-Day Clarity Challenge!
The 6-Day Clarity Challenge
NEXT LIVE ROUND: Thursday 26th to Tuesday 31st March 2026. Six days. One short audio per day. Exercises that are fun and move the compass.
It’s free, it runs in a Telegram group, and it will not ask you to manifest anything on a vision board.
What it will do is help you get honest about what you want, understand what’s actually been getting in the way, and figure out what moving forward looks like for you specifically.
This challenge is for you if you’ve ever thought:
“I feel so much indecision and uncertainty; I don’t know how to move forward.”
“I want to build a life that actually feels like mine.
“I’m at a major crossroads, and I’ve lost my sense of direction.”
“I’m craving connection with people who actually get it.”
“I know what I don’t want. I just can’t seem to figure out what I do.”
Hundreds of people have already done it. Here’s what some of them said:
“My new identity came to me SO clear and felt SO good.”
“Identifying the limiting belief ‘I have to do it like everyone else’ and choosing a different story feels incredibly freeing.”
“It’s nice to not be alone.”
“I will join whatever community you create because I know it will be fostered in an energy of growth, acceptance, and soul.”
“Having a group of like-minded people made me feel supported even though we were all working through different things.”
“I’ve so enjoyed it. Thank you for being so generous with this.”
What you’ll walk away with:
A clearer picture of what you actually want and why you’ve been struggling to get there. An understanding of the patterns and stories that have been keeping you stuck. Real tools to move forward this week.
NEXT LIVE ROUND: Thursday 26th to Tuesday 31st March 2026
It’s free. It’s six days. And it might be exactly what you’ve been waiting for.
a letter from me to, you, like we used to do it. remember that? remember then? very 2020-esque (which feels like a century ago now)…
MAR 19, 2026
hello ོ☼𓂃
It is nyepi today, for those who observe: the national day of silence. Which means the whole island has shut down and nothing is open and everything is silent and it’s literally the loveliest thing. It’s also new moon and the start of the astrological new year (the real new year imo), which all feels some kind of dialled-up level kismet.
Life has been so… everything lately, that I don’t even know where to start. Maybe the best start is: we are here, and we are living, and that is enough.
Since being fully revived from the depths of despair after the frickin’ snakebite of a year that was 2025, I am rekindling my mojo. Mojo! A word I scorn!
The only time I didn’t work for myself was when I worked for a public speaker and author while I seceretly built on my business on company time who fancied himself Australia’s Seth Godin, which to be fair, he kind of was, bald egg-head and all (and, might I add, a very kind employer, probably as good as they come) who loved to talk about losing and finding one’s mojo which he obviously must have had plenty of experience with since he wrote an entire book about it.
Anyway, I digress,here I am using the word because I can’t think of a better one.
Other words might be: my enthusiasm, charm, joie de vivre, appeal for life. Anyway, I feel more alive now than I have in a very, very long time, and I am grateful. So damn grateful. Even grateful for the shitshow that went down. All of it is just so good and fine and perfect.
Amongst it all, I was reminded why I have devoted my entire life to learn about applying psychology, epigenetics, and the power of our consciousness to our everyday. We literally can change the entire trajectory of our lives by changing our minds. It’s wild. It’s so beautiful. What a gift.
I spent the past 6 months doing exactly that. Lots of unpeeling, facing uncomfortable truths and discipline were involved. I was hard and I did not enjoy it particularly, but it worked, and that’s all that matters.
Back when I used to send these newsletters more like personal letters, I felt freer to include all of my invitations to my work more unprohibitively, but the last couple of years, that’s changed, and it’s… I don’t know… just felt different. But you know what? I am taking my power back.
TWO INVITATIONS FOR YOU
ONE
If you’ve been feeling the pull to go deeper, to have someone genuinely in your corner as you navigate what’s next, April is a good time to work together.
I’m offering a limited number of 1:1 mentoring packages this month at a special price. If we’ve worked together before, think of this as your next chapter. If we haven’t, this is a beautiful place to begin.
The April Mentoring Package 4 weekly 1:1 sessions Email support between calls A clear, focused approach to wherever you’re ready to move €550, for April only
A few words from people I’ve had the privilege of working with:
“At 59, I discovered it’s never too late to transform.” — Annelie
“For the first time in a long time I felt the true potential of my business — and all of a sudden it felt EASY.” — Kate
“After just one session, I felt a deep shift. Right after our call, I got an email from what turned out to be one of my biggest clients.” — Gina Marie
“She helped me strip back the noise so I can see my essence more clearly. Before we started I felt drained, scattered and stretched thin. Now I feel so excited.” — Stephanie
These spaces fill quickly. If you feel the yes, reply to this email and we’ll take it from there.
The Free 6-Day Clarity Challenge Thursday 26 — Tuesday 31 March
This is the third time I’ve run this challenge, and each time it surprises me how much can shift in just six days. If you’ve been sitting with indecision, feeling like you’re at a crossroads, or simply craving a clearer sense of what you actually want, this was made for that.
Each day you’ll receive a short audio lesson and a reflection exercise, delivered straight to your phone via Telegram. The community that forms around it is, genuinely, one of the best parts. Last time, 100 people joined us.
What past participants have said:
‘Vienda’s reflections on stuckness were immediately helpful and deeply inspiring. The journaling exercises brought so much clarity, I’m already seeing things differently.”
“I loved the first audio note so much I shared it with my partner straight away. The whole experience felt thoughtful, generous, and genuinely impactful.”
“My biggest breakthrough was realising the new identity that’s been calling me. Through the journaling, it became so clear—and it felt really, really good.”
“This challenge helped me see a limiting belief I didn’t even realise I was holding: that I have to do things like everyone else. Choosing a different story feels incredibly freeing.”
It’s free. It starts in six days. It goes for six days. And it might be exactly what this season is asking for.
Girls (and guys, yes, I need you too, especially you!) I went on a date last night! Then I accidentally friend-zoned him! I need input!Wait, this is where we paywall because we are not spilling secrets to the public anymore. Nope. No, we are not.
“When the sun rose the next day, people in the village found her naked, half alive and half scorched outside her home. After what must have been a terrible fight, she had been doused in kerosene and set alight by her husband. They came to fetch me, and I took her to the hospital, where I was told that there was nothing they could do. She would not survive. But the baby, I begged, save the baby. Please save the baby. What I did not know is that if you burn a woman on the outside, it burns the baby on the inside. That was the day I devoted myself to my work.”
Our small group drew ragged breaths over empty metal plates from our wooden tables and chairs in the communal dining hall, the air thick with stunned silence from the story. It was the seventh of fourteen days at the ayurveda centre, where I had come to soothe the delicate electricity of my mind.
She was a Catholic nun in her 70s who came every year for a week to recharge and have a little holiday. With her was a small entourage of elderly German women1, donors to the 72 orphanages the nun founded across India.
Ok, wait, I started at a particular point of the story arc, so let me quickly give you some context. For ease, let’s call the nun Sister.
In her early twenties she was living in a convent in South India when a young pregnant woman came to the door late one evening, begging for somewhere to stay. But the nunnery did not allow visitors, however much she pleaded. She had to turn the woman away.
The next morning the villagers found her.
After that day she made a private vow to herself that she would never again turn someone away when they asked for help. It was a decision that did not go down particularly well with the rest of the sisters, who were her only family. She had taken vows of obedience. There was no structure, no funding, no plan for what helping people would actually look like. But her devotion ran so deep that she was willing to be ostracised to follow it.
She began asking for help. She told the story to anyone who would listen. Slowly, with the generosity of strangers and the support of a few brave allies, she managed to buy a small piece of land and build the first structure on it. Over time her fellow sisters began to support her. Donations grew. The work expanded. Five decades later, that ramshackle beginning has helped thousands of women get off the streets and out of bad marriages, and their children to be educated across the country.
Listening to her recount the story, there were plenty of moments of self-doubt, fear, desperation, and uncertainty. There were obstacles and disagreements and years where progress felt impossible. But underneath all of it was one thing: devotion.
Years ago someone suggested to me that it might be more useful to think in terms of devotion rather than discipline, and the idea lodged itself into my life where it has remained ever since.
my most viral post ever, find it here, the comments underneath are gold
Discipline is one of those virtues modern culture practically worships. It conjures images of control, grit, people forcing themselves through routines with a kind of stoic determination. The language around it has a specific tone and feeling. Discipline your body. Discipline your mind. Do the thing whether you feel like it or not. It belongs to athletes and soldiers and productivity systems and the entire industry built around optimisation and self-mastery.
NB: I do use discipline from time to time. For example, sometimes I need discipline to integrate a new habit, but once the habit settles into my life it often softens into devotion, an act of care for myself or for others. More on that soon.
Devotion lives in an entirely different part of the emotional vocabulary. It belongs to religion and art and care. We speak of devotion in the context of prayer, or lovers, or the quiet fidelity someone has to a craft they have practised for decades. A devoted person returns to something not because they are forcing themselves but because they feel drawn back to it. There is a softness to the word, but also a kind of gravity. You don’t white-knuckle devotion. You move toward it gently, with care.
What makes the distinction interesting is that from the outside the behaviour often looks identical. The disciplined writer writes every day. The devoted writer also writes every day. The disciplined person wakes early, takes the walk, practices the craft, repeats the ritual with impressive consistency. The devoted person does exactly the same thing.
The difference is almost entirely internal. One experience feels like compliance, with the faint threat of punishment. The other feels more like participation in something you love.
Discipline does have its place. There are moments when you need a little structure to introduce something unfamiliar into your life, the way you might gently guide a plant in the direction you hope it will grow. But once the habit settles in, once it becomes part of your days and life, the effort often softens into devotion. What began as discipline slowly becomes an act of care, something you return to not because you must but because it matters to you.
Which might also explain why discipline works beautifully for a while and then, for many people, begins to collapse under its own weight. Force is an effective motivator in short bursts. You can push yourself through a surprising amount of resistance when the stakes feel high or the reward feels close enough to touch. But force inevitably creates friction, until the thing you’re doing starts to feel strangely heavy.
Devotion behaves a little differently because it isn’t really about force at all. It’s about relationship. A gardener doesn’t return to the garden each morning because they have mastered the discipline of gardening. They return because tending the soil feels like participating in something alive. We feed ourselves and the people we love not out of discipline but because we want to nurture something. The act already holds its own meaning, which makes returning to it feel less like effort and more like a natural continuation.
Seen this way, devotion quietly reframes the entire idea of consistency. Consistency in the language of discipline often sounds mechanical, almost industrial. Maintain the streak. Don’t break the chain. Do the thing every day. The energy behind it is urgent, tense, as if one missed day might undo the entire effort. Devotion feels different. Less like maintaining a system and more like tending a living thing. You come back to it not out of fear that something will break, but because the relationship itself is still alive.
Discipline asks how do I make myself do this. Devotion asks what do I care about enough to keep returning to?
Thinking back on that meal in the dining hall, the thing that moves me most is that Sister never once spoke about discipline. She didn’t talk about perseverance or resilience or the endless challenges it took to build all those orphanages across a country. She told the story of a single moment she could not forget, and the vow she made to herself afterwards.
Everything that followed has grown from there. Not from force. From devotion. Which is perhaps the simplest way to understand devotion. Not forcing yourself to do something every day. It’s finding the thing you care about enough that you keep coming back and facing whatever it takes.
As a complete aside, most mornings these women would line up at my breakfast table asking for help with whatever small thing had mysteriously stopped working on their phones. Being the youngest person there by at least a decade, often more, I somehow became the resident tech support. This mostly involved being handed a phone with great seriousness and quietly reversing a setting that had been accidentally tapped at some point the day before.
It finally happened. I pooped myself in public this morning. Wait. It’s not as bad as you think.
I was at the beach for the first time in weeks. The monsoon rain finally stopped and I got up early and walked down to the black sand and got a coconut at a shack on the edge of the inlet, then wandered along the shore until I found a spot where I could sit in the sun and watch the surf lifesavers train in the water. I had only just settled in. Towel laid out. Coconut balanced on a piece of driftwood. Clothes off so my skin could finally see daylight again in a teeny tiny bikini after weeks of monsoon rain. And then I felt it. A rumble in my stomach. A familiar urge, but more urgent than usual. I had only been sitting there for about thirty seconds and already I knew I didn’t have much time. Panicking slightly, I started packing up my things. If I can just make it to the nearest toilet, I thought. But the nearest toilet was not really that near, and my body, it turns out, had very little patience for dignity or logistics. I dropped everything and ran. Not toward the cafés but toward a fishing boat a few metres away, ducked behind it and squatted down. Just in time.
I knew yesterday, right after I ate the fresh vegan spring rolls, that something was slightly off. The evidence was now undeniable. I tried to clean up and cover my tracks with some leaves but honestly there is only so much one can do in a situation like this. What can one do but get on with things? I casually strolled back out from behind the fishing boat hoping that no one would need to use it for at least a week, looked around satisfied that nobody had seen me, picked up my towel and my coconut and started making my way home. Home was a twenty five minute walk away. I knew I needed to get clean and I needed to be near a toilet for the rest of the day.
And then.
The next nearest café didn’t have an easily accessible restroom but the one after that was part hotel, part café, and happened to be the exact place where I had eaten those damn spring rolls that caused the predicament in the first place, which frankly made the situation feel a little bit like their responsibility. I felt like they owed it to me to recitfy the situation. I confidently strolled past reception like I belonged there, which is really the only way to enter a place when you are about to do something you technically shouldn’t. I found an unlocked vacant hotel room, walked into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet to relieve the remains of whatever turbulence was still unfolding in my stomach. Then I stripped naked, got into the shower, washed myself thoroughly, shampooed my hair with the tiny hotel shampoo, dried off, got dressed again in everything except my now retired bikini bottoms, and strode back out onto the street feeling, if not proud exactly, then at least reborn.
When I got home I peeled off my clothes, put them in the washing basket, rinsed under the shower one more time just in case, pulled on an oversized t-shirt and got into bed, which is where I will remain for the rest of the day. Close to the toilet.
The funny thing is that when I decided on the title of this article — what can no longer be postponed — it was before all of this happened. My idea at the time was far more high-brow. I wanted to write to you about all the things in life we put off because of this that or the other, when actually the things we are avoiding are often the very things that move us closer to ourselves. But it turns out the title still works. Because this morning on the beach something very literal happened. My body made it abundantly clear that there are moments in life when postponement is simply no longer an option.
A few days ago I asked on Instagram: What needs to be claimed? (Excuse the ‘why’ in place of ‘what’ typo. Here are some of your answers:
I look at these beautiful heartfelt answers and think about what it means to claim them. What it really means. In ourselves. In our daily lives. Claiming something rarely happens in a single moment of self-realisation or readiness. More often it requires a shift in behaviour or energetics. A choice we begin making over and over again. Something that, at a certain point, can no longer be postponed if we really want what we say we do.
Take self-love. Claiming self-love doesn’t mean reaching some mythical state where you love yourself twenty-four hours a day and never struggle again. It means that in the moments when you are tired, disappointed, ashamed, or convinced you are not enough, you choose the loving action anyway. You rest when you would normally push through. You speak to yourself with a little more gentleness than you feel you deserve. You stop participating in your own internal bullying.
Claiming abundance is similar. It isn’t just about learning how to receive more. It’s about noticing all the subtle ways you have been telling life that you are not worthy of what you want. The ways you downplay your gifts, undercharge for your work, apologise for taking up space, or quietly assume that other people are allowed to live well but somehow you are not.
Claiming health is not simply about giving the body time to heal. It is about being willing to listen to the reasons the body fell out of balance in the first place. Illness has a way of pointing, sometimes quite bluntly, to what is no longer sustainable. The pace that needs to slow down. The stress that cannot continue. The truth that has been quietly sitting in the background waiting to be acknowledged.
Claiming work you love is rarely neat or linear either. It usually requires you to do things that feel uncomfortable, unexpected, and occasionally inconvenient. You stretch yourself. You try things you are not yet good at. You keep showing up before you feel fully ready. The love for the work often grows through that process rather than appearing fully formed at the beginning.
And claiming romantic love… That might be the most confronting one of all. Because claiming love often means letting go of the ways we have protected ourselves from it. The strategies, the stories, the old disappointments we have been using as quiet evidence that it might not work out anyway.
You have desires and you ask for things in life. And suddenly there you are. Standing in front of something that can no longer be postponed.
* I’ve opened up my books for a few 1:1 mentoring spaces across the month of March.
If you need to untangle this next step in your life → book here.
If you want to start your own writing journey on Substack → book here.
If you’re ready for creative strategy infused with intuitive intelligence → book here.
I kept trying to take flight. In the dream I knew, with total certainty, that I could fly, but every time I tried to lift off it felt like something heavy was pulling my body back down again. There were all these reasons why I couldn’t. People telling me I shouldn’t, even wrong, to want to. I kept waking up and then slipping back into the exact same dream again and again, each time attempting the same thing from a slightly different angle. Trying harder. Trying softer. Scheming. Adjusting. Negotiating with gravity. Until finally, toward the end, after many false starts and failed attempts, something shifted and I lifted cleanly off the ground. And the feeling, when it happened, was ecstatic.
It felt strangely indicative of the inner journey I find myself on right now.
Lately I’ve been asking myself the same questions over and over again. In a world increasingly fragmented by things like social media and AI, what actually feels meaningful to me? How do I want to contribute? Not just in ways that are productive or visible or strategic, but in ways that genuinely feel good and do good.
More and more I feel drawn toward creating things that last. Things that are genuine and whole. Work that doesn’t feed on the low-grade panic or outrage that so much of the world now runs on. I know instinctively that whatever I create next won’t come from strategy alone, or from information, or from reacting to whatever the algorithm seems to want. It is comimg from reaching inward and pouring from a place inside myself that none of those external forces can really access or touch.
Remembering how to do that seems to be the journey I’m on right now. One that is revealing itself slowly, almost reluctantly, from within. One of my greatest gifts is helping other people find that place within themselves too.
Yesterday my friend Kelly Vittengl and I had a conversation that stayed with me. She told me she’s become increasingly convinced that one of the truest acts of rebellion available to us right now is to stop endlessly consuming the news and instead start becoming and creating what is actually true and authentic to us.
It can sound a little like spiritual bypassing. It can even feel slightly uncomfortable to say out loud. But her point wasn’t that we should ignore suffering or pretend the world isn’t complicated. For all the darkness we see in the world, she said, there is also immense goodness. And if you find yourself struggling to see it, sometimes the most meaningful thing you can do is become it.
I’ve been wrestling with this quite a lot lately. I’ve found myself hesitating before sharing things publicly. Wondering if it’s appropriate to talk about beauty, or creativity, or joy when the world feels so noisy and heavy. And yet, deep down, I still believe that the most meaningful contribution many of us can make is to focus on the things we genuinely value. To build and nurture the things we want to see more of.
Perhaps that is what so many of us are feeling right now in different ways. I suspect this is where the question of what can no longer be postponed becomes important. Because eventually something in us grows tired of waiting. Tired of negotiating with the parts of ourselves that are afraid or cautious or endlessly trying to behave appropriately for the moment we are living in.
Eventually the body runs for the fishing boat. Eventually the dreamer lifts off the ground. Eventually something inside us realises that postponing our lives isn’t actually helping anyone. Not the world. Not other people. Not ourselves.
a rescue from the damaged film roll, taken in Mallorca last October
This is a perfect moment. I got out of bed, turned on the kettle, pulled back the curtains and opened the sliding door to hear the monsoon rains fall outside, poured the hot water onto a green tea bag inside a small hotel-room cup, and pulled both my laptop and the cup back into bed with me. I could not want more than this, right now, I thought this morning.
I love wanting. I love the heat of it, the ache, the way it stretches you toward something just beyond your current life. Desire works to not only fuel our creative practice, but to define our lives. It is the engine. It is the reason you rearrange the furniture of your days. It is the reason you leave and the reason you stay. It is the pulse beneath every decision that later gets dressed up as logic.
To want is to risk humiliation. To want is to expose the soft underbelly and say, here, this is where I am tender. Which is why so many of us, particularly women who have been trained to be palatable and self-sufficient and chill about everything, learn to dim our wanting. We pretend we are above it. We call it being realistic. We say we are protecting ourselves from disappointment.
But when you distance yourself from your desires, you do not become safer. You become flatter. You begin to live in a narrow corridor of what is acceptable, reasonable, likely. And there is a particular suffering in that, the suffering of being cut off from your own aliveness.
The real work is not in wanting1 more. The real work is in discerning which desires are actually yours. Which ones rose up from your own body and which ones were installed there by a culture that confuses sameness with success. It takes time to tell the difference. It takes sitting still long enough to feel the flicker of envy and ask whether it is pointing toward something true or merely something popular. It takes a willingness to disappoint the imaginary panel of judges who have been scoring your life from the sidelines.
We are living in an era of terrifying homogeneity, where everyone wants the same morning routine and the same apartment aesthetic and the same calibrated ambition. Desire has been flattened into algorithms. And when everything looks the same, it becomes harder to remember that you are allowed to be specific.
Do you know what you want? Not what would look good. Not what would make sense on paper. What you want. Let’s talk about that.
If you are feeling your way through it, if you are scattered and sensitive and a little tired of your own overthinking, that does not mean you are failing. It means you are in the first, awkward, necessary stage of coming back into contact with yourself. Clarity is rarely sharp at the beginning. It is fog that slowly thins. It is learning to trust that the quiet tug in your chest is worth following.
I began writing this morning with the earnest intention of tying together a series of private and unfinished thoughts, only to realise that they refuse to line up. They arrive as fragments, like shells washed up at different hours of the tide, so I am letting them remain fragments. There is a kind of integrity in not forcing coherence where there is none yet.
This morning, I yearn for connection. I want to make small talk with you, while being honest about the complicated feelings that life brings.
Oh, yes, the grass is lovely. Have you talked to the trees lately? Have you lain on the ground and felt your atoms vibrate? When you listen to music, do you ever feel as though you are remembering a self that predates this particular body?
I want to talk about the weather and whether you have tried the new café, while also admitting that sometimes I wake up with a strange ache in my chest that feels like homesickness for a place I want to call home.
This morning, I want to ask you a sincere question. Across the past 4 months, I’ve loved introducing you to the most beautiful and creative women I know, love and admire the most in a series called ‘on the list’ (read them all here). I find myself genuinely curious whether you want more of those glimpses into other women’s worlds or more of my own interior wanderings. Please let me know.
When I was in Hampi, my film camera was damaged in the crush of moving suitcases. Yesterday I carried its small, wounded body into a repair shop.. Nothing could be done except to force it open and retrieve the film. Twenty three grainy, imperfect photographs emerged, small dark windows into the past six months.
also recued, taken in Colomb Bay, India
After my first 10 days in India, more than a month ago, I moved myself into a rustic cottage for a few days, complete with half falling down sink, a padlock to close the door and the two most uncomfortable pillows I’ve ever slept on and no wifi that steps out onto the sandy shore with the ocean lapping against it 10 metres away. It was uncomfortable. It was heaven. It was exactly what I needed.
I mostly just think and feel and be and walk and lie in the sun and dip in the sea and listen to audiobooks. East of Eden, There Are Rivers In The Sky, and Brooklyn play in my ears. I eat masala dosas for lunch, smoothie bowls for breakfast and salty tamarind cardamom ice cream for dinner during my sunset walk.
On the second night, I go sit on my porch to watch the sunset. The boy (man?) in the hut next to mine sits on his porch. Can’t tell how old he is because I find it hard to guess ages, and also because I am myopic and can’t see him clearly enough to know. He gives me late 20s vibes.
We speak in the tentative, curious way strangers do when there is nowhere else to be. He tells me he is coming down from the high of a 10-day silent meditation retreat he just did. I tell him that I remember that fragile clarity that makes everything feel both significant and meaningless. I am a little envious, but can’t find the 10 days to do one between my client and commitments.
Someone walks past with a spliff, and I smell it and wish I were inclined to get high another way, but I don’t like smoking much. He tells me he’s 30, and when his brother calls, he says he has to answer. On the phone, he tells his brother in German that he’s with a beautiful woman and cannot talk but misses him dearly. I hide a secret smile at that and realise how often I’ve mistaken my desire for human connection for romantic potential. We go for dinner, exchange life stories and build a firm yet fleeting friendship.
I decided on this next step, made the plan, and booked the flight while I was mid-stream in Ayurvedic treatment, lying on a hard wooden table slick with warm sesame oil, staring up at a ceiling fan that has seen many women arrive unravelling and leave rearranged. There is something deliciously unhinged about making life decisions when I am horizontal and slightly cracked open.
The two weeks of panchakarma2 shifted something tectonic in me. Emotionally and spiritually, yes, but also in the granular. I came to realise that my own self-judgement was my biggest block, but so deeply sutured into my cells that I couldn’t access it from the mind. I had to dig deep into my body to remove it. The physical cleanse pulled the poisons of my own mind to the surface and allowed me to finally own and release the ways I was causing havoc to my own system.
This has resurrected my passion for epigenetics and why I got into this line of work. Our consciousness is so powerful. It can decide how bogged down we are with events, memories and trauma. And it can decide to let it all go and be free in the now moment.
The stories we tell about what has happened to us are not inert. They are biochemical instructions. Consciousness is directive. It informs inflammation. It influences repair. We can choose to rehearse injury or we can choose to reorient toward possibility. That choice does not erase history, but it does alter how history lives inside us. The body is listening all the time. We are so flexible and pliable, able to receive life’s greatest gifts if we choose to. What a responsibility. What a miracle.
And yes, aesthetically too, because I refuse to pretend that the surface does not matter. My skin, normally dry, has softened into something almost unfamiliar from the twice-daily sesame oil massages. Even my stomach, where time and stress had etched their quiet signatures, has firmed and grown supple. Time has not reversed so much as been renegotiated.
I promised myself I would continue the ritual and have already broken that promise because I have yet to locate sesame oil. There is something very human and humbling about being transformed by a practice and immediately failing to continue it. Still, I will find the oil. I will return to the altar of my own skin.
While I was undergoing treatment, suspended between purging and replenishing, two desires stood plainly in front of me:
The desire to root and build community. The desire to contribute to the world in meaningful ways.
I went to India to heal… & there’s only one reason why I could
Small things: a decision made under duress, a flight to another continent, the balmy heat that slows everything down, a train that carries a woman through the night, bitter herbs mixed into hot water, a spiritual teacher that guides towards true liberation, a purgation of everything that can’t be carried forward into the future, daily drenching in sesame oil, a living made from creativity and adaptability. It is always the small twists that alter our lives the most profoundly. The beckoning of another way. A prompt from a stranger. An unexpected email. Try as we might to convince ourselves that we control our lives, we make choices on the paths, and we take and harvest the outcomes in the endless stumble towards ourselves.
I open the wooden door to the darkness and step into cool air that feels like silk against my skin. Birds are in full chorus. From somewhere to my left a flute threads through the dawn from the temple down the road. The sky is turning a milky grey that makes everything look suspended between worlds. It’s 5:48 am in Kerala, South India. I am on the 10th day of my Ayurveda retreat.
True to form, I did very little research before arriving. I did not know I would be drinking increasing amounts of ghee on an empty stomach for mornings in a row and mostly fasting with just a little rice porridge to sustain me. I did not know this would be followed by a full day of purging from every angle. I did not know how disorienting it would feel. Nor how holy and good. The containment is medicine. Every day is structured. Wake. Drink. Rest. Treatment. Eat. Walk. Yoga. Philosophy. Silence. My only task is to release what my body has been carrying and allow them else to hold the perimeter.
Something begins to soften. I feel joy, ease and humour flicker again in small, steady ways. I came here to heal. To restore the severe depletion and imbalances caused by the last few years of living in a world that I no longer recognised or felt held by.
It’s working. It’s working!
I go outside and sit in the dark on the wicker chair on my porch, watching the sky lighten. My early morning “medicine” — a concoction of herbs to help with stress, sleep, and hormone balancing, mixed into hot water — will be arrive soon. Through the silvery dawn, I watch a figure walk from room to room delivering each person’s morning elixir. When mine comes, I wait until he leaves and then hold my nose so I don’t gag from the smell and gulp it down in two parts.
We are in the season of imagination. Of letting your dreams reveal themselves to you so that you can put plans and actions in place. If you let yourself lean into the stillness, enough quiet to touch into truth, to dream up what big life you have yet to live.
I love this dreaming phase. It’s hazy and romantic. Not yet rooted, it floats, so I go up to meet it and see which ones I can pull down to myself. Some dissolve. Some thicken. My dreams are not made of things I want to have, but ways I want to feel. I love the dreams that ripen with time, with warmth, with love. Letting something flower from within me, my most private corners, honeyed ideas trickle from my heart into the mind. Eventually, some of them make it past that imagination, to drip from my fingers and into the world.
In between sesame oil massages, herbal treatments, yoga, meditation, philosophy lessons, and simple meals, I find a gentle rhythm. I take a few client calls. I work lightly on what needs attention. I read with focus I haven’t felt in months. I walk through the rice fields and watch water lilies move in the wind. I gather fallen frangipanis and place them in a bowl of water beside my bed. Space brings imagination back online.
None of what I am doing now would be possible without the business that I have built to hold me. Even though I’ve pulled back and am working less for the first two months of 2026, I’ve maintained my income due to the systems I have in place. As I shared recently in running a business as a type-b woman I learned how to do this when I first started through Marie Forleo’s BSchool.
Enrolments open for BSchool today, as of right now, and I’d love you to join me. More information on what that looks like and means (including a $1,427 worth of gifts):
I am in the imagination stage of my life. Both in my inward-facing life (personal) and outward-facing life (business). The business side is where I tend to need the most structured systems to hold the flexibility of the work that I do, which is where BSchool comes in. As I reimagine the ways I moved forward, I pair my dreams with practical actions that I continue to source from this course 10 years later. Learn more here.
If you have questions about running an online business that you want answered plainly and well, reply to this email, and I’ll fold my best responses into the next essay.
Most of my energy right now is in my private practice, and I have a few spaces opening in March. I tend to work with women at inflexion points, the kind where something looks fine on paper but feels misaligned in the body, or where a life or business is ready for its next iteration, and you can sense it asking more of you. The work is intimate, strategic, psychological, practical, often all at once. The nature of our sessions is customised for each individual. If you would like to have a call to explore the possibility of working together, get in touch: studio@viendamaria.com
on building a financially stable, location-independent business with creativity, intuition, and a type-b personality
JAN 29, 2026
there’s a lot of fruit underneath the top layer of muesli, I swear
TLDR: How I started building and running my own online business 13 years ago, when I realised it was the only career option for me, when I thought my type-b personality could never, ever run a business, but it turns out I actually, totally could, and can and do, which has turned into one of the greatest joys of my life.
I am on my second masala chai. There is a giant bowl of mixed fruit in front of me, papaya, banana, pineapple, pomegranate seeds, with muesli and curd, that I will spend the next three to four hours luxuriously eating while I work. I love fruit. I have always loved fruit, but fruit in the tropics tastes inexplicably better. I do not know why this is true. I do not make the rules.
It is Monday, and it is a workday. I have emails to write, marketing tasks to tend to, Zoom meetings to attend, and a private client session in the evening that was rescheduled from last week when the wifi went out for an entire day. Unreliable wifi is probably one of the highest stress factors of my very type-B, self-employed life.
A year ago, I thought I would have my feet firmly planted in one place, building a life rooted in that place. And then life decided that this was not the life meant for me. Instead, I am in India, sitting in a cafe overlooking the Tungabhadra River in Hampi, the lost city of gods. I am slowly weaving my way south to go to an Ayurvedic retreat, the main reason I came to India.
This makes it sound like I am a digital nomad, which I am absolutely not. I dislike the term and find most people who operate under it irritating. I am not here to optimise my lifestyle or collect experiences. I am a woman rebuilding her life after a total collapse in my personal world, and coming to India to nourish my body and my wavering spirit made more sense than sitting alone in a small apartment in the cold, battling the seasonal depression that inevitably appears when daylight hours shorten and temperatures drop below 16°C. It just happens that thirteen years ago, I had the very wise idea to build a business that was location independent, not because I wanted to be untethered, but because I wanted the security that comes from creating your own thing in an increasingly insecure world.
What I am here for is time and space. The kind of time and space that healing and grief require, and that our modern Western world does not allow for. There, I had to keep going at a speed my soul could not keep pace with. Here, I can slow down enough for my body to match my internal rhythm, no longer flanked on all sides by the demand to do more, better, faster, harder. This is something I have struggled with my entire life, the inability or refusal to keep pace with a world I fundamentally do not want to participate in.
Omg, cute! This little girl just came up to me and offered me sweets, and I thought she was trying to sell them to me, so I said “no, thank you”, and then her mother (?) told me it’s her birthday, and it’s tradition to give people sweets on your birthday, so of course I accepted. Her name is Amrita, and she’s turning 10. Happy birthday, Amrita!
Which brings me, loosely, to my point. Given my sensitive personality and my inability to follow rules simply because they exist, it was always clear that the only way I would be able to function in society was by working for myself. I am a terrible employee. I cannot align myself with things I do not genuinely believe in. The lack of integrity causes physical pain in my body.
But I am also the most type-b person. My business runs on intuition, pattern reading and vibes. I barely do spreadsheets, and I don’t have coherent systems of organisation. I am organised in a chaotic, beautiful, fluid way that makes sense only to me, and I am happy about that. I am consistently inconsistent, and also determined and disclplined but mostly just really devoted to creating a beautiful life through psychology and art and poetry and beauty and pragmatism. So when I decided I wanted to have my own business without having what I thought were necessary business skills, I thwarted myself. Until I decided to try anyway.
Sorry for the randomness, but I’m having a bit of a stream-of-consciousness write-it-as-it-happens moment, which includes natural interruptions. I just went to use the bathroom and thought to remind anyone who is romanticising my life right now that while yes, everything can be and should be romanticised, everywhere you go, there are challenges.
India is not an easy place. Not in the way Paris is easy, which is where I was before I came here. Squat toilets are the norm, and while I genuinely love squatting as a bodily practice, cleanliness is not guaranteed. Comfort is inconsistent. Beds are often uncomfortable. Hotels and homestays receive excellent ratings for experiences that would be considered below average elsewhere. If your stomach is not accustomed to spice, every meal is a potential gamble. Wifi can be excellent or disappear entirely without warning, which is stressful when your work depends on it. None of this is a complaint. I am very happy to be here. The benefits outweigh the costs, for now. I simply want to be clear that no place is paradise by default. Any place can be paradise or hell depending on context, capacity, and timing.
my current view (yes, those are banana palms)
There’s this trend going around since the start of this year where people are sharing their 2016, which is cute, but the year that actually changed my life was 2013. I was living a version of my dream life, and had been burned exactly 0 times. I was made up of hope and optimism and maybe 1 single insecurity. That was the year I enrolled in an online business course and started my business, which very quickly grew into something capable of supporting both me and my distinctly non-traditional way of living.
As a type-b woman, I am naturally curious, persistent, and an unconventional thinker who uses intuition as a strategy. Intuition does not give you the entire plan. It gives you the next right step. It often points toward a new direction long before the how becomes clear. In 2013, I kept receiving a very strong internal message that I needed help in the areas that did not come naturally to me. I did not need more creativity. I needed structure. BSchool gave me systems, language, and a framework sturdy enough to support my intuitive way of working without disregarding it.
Looking back, I can see how an intuitive, type-b approach to business has shaped my personal brand, influenced what I create, and placed me in opportunities I was uniquely prepared for. It is only in retrospect that the path appears coherent. Intuition requires radical self-trust, but it is sustained by systems and processes. Thirteen years later, I still return to parts of that course when I need inspiration, grounding, or a strong backbone for my business. I watch a few videos, revisit an exercise, and remember what actually matters and what works for me.
In two weeks, across three days from Tuesday, February 10th to Thursday, February 12th, the business course I did is running a free Dream Business Bootcamp. If you feel that internal nudge or a sense of curiosity, you can find more information here.
What I know now, and did not know then, is that the question is rarely whether you are capable. It is whether you trust yourself enough and believe you can find a structure that can hold the way you already think, feel, and move through the world without asking you to become someone else.
Thirteen years ago, I did not suddenly become more linear or more traditionally business-minded. I learned how to let structures carry the weight so that I could do what I do best. If that resonates, the Dream Business Bootcamp is a fun place to begin.
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i like the way the froth from the milk spilled over the top of the pitcher
It is Wednesday, and it is another workday. I am sitting in a co-working office in Bangalore not far from the train station, where I arrived early this morning and will depart from later tonight as I continue moving south. The space is quiet and insulated, a small pocket of stillness, and a reprieve from the mass of people moving continuously outside.
If I am being honest with myself, living and travelling this way was exhilarating a decade ago. Now, it feels different. Less romantic. Less novel. I notice my tolerance is lower, my body more discerning, my nervous system clearer about what it needs. I love that. I love seeing how I have changed, how my expectations and priorities have matured, how much more I value steadiness over stimulation. This trip has been clarifying. It is showing me how I want to orient my life and my business going forward around support, depth, and continuity.
I am acutely aware of the privilege inherent in even being able to have these reflections. The privilege of time, of choice, of mobility, of financial resourcing. That privilege comes partly from circumstance and partly from years of intentional effort, from consciously designing a life that extends from who I actually am rather than who the world told me I should be. That kind of life does not happen accidentally. It requires courage. It requires risk. It requires a willingness to let things unfold differently than you imagined, and the capacity to stay present when they do.
I have immense respect for anyone who chooses a path outside the status quo. Not because it is more virtuous, but because it demands a level of self-responsibility that most people are never taught how to hold. Building a life and a business that reflect your internal reality is not always comfortable, but it is honest. An honesty that compounds.
when I kept hitting breaking point in November I booked a flight
JAN 07, 2026
Colomb Bay, South Goa, India
The sky is pink. The temperature is perfect. The air feels like skin. There is no boundary between my body and the sky. We are both naked, in perfect harmony.
I eat in a ramshackle hut sitting on stilts at the northern end of the beach. Papaya juice and momos or a mackerel thali. The second time, the proprietor thanks me for coming back. When he brings me the bill, he has written a scrawling love letter across it. I can barely make out how much I need to pay. It makes me smile.
I look for the huts I stayed in seventeen years ago, but I can’t find them. I walk farther than I meant to. I slow down. I scan the shoreline. Everything has changed, of course. The beach. The paths. The way things are arranged. I have changed too.
Seventeen years ago I was naive and new. I still grasped onto purity. I hadn’t yet felt the full depth of life, the particular weight of it, the way it settles into your body and rearranges your inner furniture without asking. I didn’t yet know what life could ask of you, or what it would take.
I was on an ardent spiritual path then, under the illusion that a particular flavour of consciousness made me exempt. That being “spiritually conscious and evolved” somehow placed me outside the ordinary contracts of grief, fear, longing, pleasure, disappointment. That belief is seductive because it flatters the ego while pretending to dissolve it.
What I know now is that avoiding pain doesn’t remove it. It just delays your willingness to let it sit down beside you. It creates another layer of suffering. Tension, resistance, self-judgement. Because life keeps arriving anyway.
These days my spiritual practice is much simpler. I let life be as raw as it is. I let grief have weight. I let joy be bright and felt. I let pleasure move through me without needing to turn it into meaning. I let fear exist without trying to alchemise it into wisdom. Reverence, for me now, looks like staying. Staying with what is actually here.
It was here, seventeen years ago, that I was inspired to start my first business. The one I poured forty thousand dollars into. The one that failed. I saw the reality of textile workers’ lives. So I started an ethical fashion brand called ética & ella. I was ahead of my time. And completely unprepared.
Sometimes I think I’m still failing at business even though I’ve run one successfully for a decade. I don’t like convincing people they need things they don’t. And if we are honest, we probably don’t really ned very much.
I think of something Mara Hoffman said when she closed her brand. How maybe the great human project of this era is simply finding ways to sell things to each other. Every day we wake up and offer something: a product, a service, an idea, a body of work, a version of ourselves. And if we aren’t selling, we’re buying.
All the mysticism, all the beauty, all the cosmic intelligence of the universe and the punchline is just… buy and sell.
Here, that world feels far away. The urgency of it. The hunger. The constant wanting. I don’t need most of the things in my suitcases. Both of them. When I left Paris, I packed everything I own. Except the winter coats, the Pilates mat, the ring light. I don’t yet know where I am going next, and didn’t want to leave anything behind that I might miss.
Every morning, I journal for a couple of hours. A part of me has come back online. A quieter intelligence. Less managerial. Less vigilant.
Access to a heart-brain that’s been tucked away tells me truths I’ve not had space for. The ways I contorted myself in ways that are rewarded by our western society. How I negotiated a world I didn’t fully believe in by staying busy, competent, contained.
Time loosens its grip.
When I kept hitting breakingpoint in November, I booked a flight. I knew I needed to do something drastic. A friend recommended going to an Ayurvedic Hospital for treatment. By the time I got the visa for India, they were all booked out. Until two days ago, when a space opened up for February 7th. I’ll be here until the end of February, for now.
My final vlog of 2025: the last month in Paris, in all its unglamorous glory. Slow brunches and busy workdays, ethical fashion chats, pre-Christmas errands, a cold that took me out, and the quiet work of not turning difficulty into a victim story. I talk therapy (again), breakups, why we date our unresolved parental wounds, and what it actually takes to take responsibility for your life as a new year approaches. Also: three big losses, one major perspective shift, and the decision to leave Paris in search of sunlight.
My apartment is set to a tropical 24°C, a decision I stand by morally. My weather app is teasing me with numbers between -1°C and 6°C, as if any of those are meaningfully different. The solstice slipped by quietly a few days ago, and with it, winter has officially arrived. I am hibernating through the final week of 2025, emerging only for strategic walks in glimpses of sunlight and friendship gatherings.
It’s Christmas Eve. I’m in bed with my laptop balanced on my thighs. A fragile truce between closing the final loops and rest, peppermint tea stationed to my right as both beverage and emotional support. Outside, the last remaining leaves clinging to the final undecided tree outside my window have turned a dark, rain-soaked brown and are rustling in the wind.
The past two months have been a slightly feral mix of redesigning, rebuilding and upgrading The Mentor Training. The kind of work that makes you forget what day it is, question your life choices, and then suddenly remember exactly why you started.
This training was born in 2022, not from a slick business plan, but from something I couldn’t ignore. Client after client arrived in my world carrying quiet damage from experiences with people who called themselves coaches or mentors and had deep emotional influence without the responsibility or rigour to match it.
Now entering our fourth year, the training has matured. The curriculum is stronger, the standards clearer, and the focus remains on ethical, relational, embodied mentoring — not performance, not charisma, not “personal brand,” but trust.
Thank you for being here with me and reading, watching, commenting and sharing your journey as we bumped along side each other through this year. This was my last note to you from me in 2025.
I am taking January off from outward-facing work and this newsletter to replenish and rebuild after a year that took everything. If you’re a private client, you’ll see me in our video calls as usual.
If you’re a free subscriber, starting next week you’ll meet one of my inspirations every Wednesday: on the list. In November, I started this gentle, playful interview series about what women I admire are tending to, dreaming of, and prioritising, one list at a time. It’s been such a joy introducing you to women who show that anything really is possible when you choose to trust yourself.
If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll continue to receive my most vulnerable writing: unfiltered, raw, honest stories and updates, as always. Essays I’m working on in my drafts include Bad Sex with Nice People, Inside My Notes App, and My Year of Magical Thinking.
If you’ve been thinking about becoming a paying subscriber, I’d be so grateful for your support. And there’s a little extra nudge: through the end of the year, I’m offering 25% off an annual subscription:
It’s 7:31 am. I just opened my laptop to write this email to you. Only to notice that an old draft of it had already been sent out! I have no idea how or why… It wasn’t in my scheduled drafts. And more importantly, it wasn’t ready! So let’s try this again…
Two tall candles are flickering on the bedside to the left of me. A freshly made hot ginger tea is steaming to the right of me. Nothing but darkness and the occasional window light being turned on or off is visible through my French door windows. Mostly, it is pitch black.
Early in the morning, when I first wake up, has always been my favourite way and time of day to sit down and connect with you like this. Lately, it’s been happening less than I would like.
It’s been one of those times where the days and weeks merge and melt into each other. I look up from my life that is all-consuming in various iterations of growth, and cannot tell if it’s Saturday or Thursday or Monday. In fact, this year felt like it folded in on itself in March and then came back out in November, making it 4 months instead of 12.
I have chosen to surrender to it all. The lack of certainty, the lack of environmental consistency, the lack… lack lack lack… I say ‘lack’, but what it really is, is an emptying out. The things I deeply yearn for cannot come from lack nor from fullness. They can only come from space.
the art of noticing ~ photo challenge
Every December, I want to notice and savour the calendar year just passed, and this year I feel something different asking to come through: a communal ritual, a way of remembering beauty together. A way of closing the year not through analysis or productivity or resolutions, but through presence. Through the practice that has quietly held me through so many seasons: noticing.
Noticing is my way home. It is a return to the small, the immediate, the sensory, the real. It is a nervous system soothing mechanism disguised as creativity. A micro-dose of aliveness. A gentle psychological intervention. And when a few of my students from The Art of Noticing writing club asked if I’d offer a two-week photo challenge to help us all see the beauty in our everyday lives… I said, “Yes, of course! I’d love that!”.
So I’m opening it to everyone: the whole extended circle of people who orbit these pages.
A free, two-week invitation into the world as it actually is: imperfect, unguarded, quietly shimmering. A collective exhale at the end of a hard year. A bridge ritual between what has been and what is beginning.
The Art of Noticing: 14 Days of Everyday Beauty December 17–31
It’s a gentle daily nudge toward a softer gaze. One prompt each morning. One photo each day. A moment you saw that you might otherwise have walked past. A flicker of light, a corner of rest, a colour that feels like hope, a texture that surprises you, a symbol of care you didn’t know you needed.
We’ll move through the world together in a slow arc:
from the external world → inward → relational → closing → opening again.
A choreography of attention. A small pilgrimage. A way to let the year exhale through you.
When you notice beauty during hard times, beauty becomes the thing that carries you through. This is the paradox at the heart of the challenge. People often imagine they must feel better before they can see beauty, but the act of seeing is often what begins the softening. This practice flips the sequence.
Over the 14 days, we’ll notice:
light as it finds us unexpected softness what stayed quiet corners the simplest joy the colour of hope and the doorway into the next year
The prompts are intentionally simple because simplicity is the practice. This is about reconnecting with beauty and your creativity. A photo is small enough not to activate perfectionism, but meaningful enough to reveal something true. A way to express without effort. A way to see without striving.
And we’ll do it together, in community — because when a group notices beauty at the same time, everyone’s eyes sharpen. My noticing widens yours. Your noticing shifts mine. We become a shared lens, a communal field of attention, each of us offering the day back to each other in the form of a single captured moment. This is how ordinary days become luminous.
The vibe: gentle, imperfect, real. cosy in the quiet-hours sense. a place to land at the end of each day. zero pressure. no catching up. come as you are, miss a day, rejoin, it doesn’t matter. a slow collective walk toward the threshold of a new year.
Your next steps: Join the challenge inside the community space. It’s free. You can come alone or bring a friend. You’ll get the daily prompt, you’ll take the photo, and you’ll share it if you want to, with words or without. You can scroll through the others’ posts each night, letting their way of seeing alter your own. And at the very end, on December 31, we’ll close with a final moment of stillness. A breath shared across distance.
If you’ve felt rushed, overwhelmed, disconnected from yourself, numb, or stretched this year — come. If you’ve wanted to make something but haven’t had the energy — come. If you’ve longed for softness, for ritual, for a simple way to feel more alive — come.
This is a doorway disguised as a challenge. A ritual disguised as a photo exercise. A remembering disguised as something casual. It’s not about taking pictures. It’s about noticing your life with an eye looking for beauty and a gentler gaze.
Save your login details. You’ll likely need to sign in more than once, so it’s best to store your username and password in your password manager.
Bookmark the community link in your browser, so you don’t have to search for the invite email each time.
You can also download the Stan Community app to your phone for easy access (or do both, whatever feels simplest):
Search for “Stan Community” in your mobile app store.
Install and open the app.
Sign in using your Stan Store login details.
Once inside
Come say hello! Post a short introduction with a photo, your name, and where you’re based, plus a few lines about what you hope to experience here and a little bit about you.
We were about to run the scene for the first time on the first day when I smelled it. A warm, unmistakable wave of alcohol came off her breath as she leaned in. I froze for half a second, confused. It was 10 a.m. on a Thursday. Was she drunk?
I pulled myself back into character because that’s what we were supposed to be doing: acting. I’d come to this six-week course specifically to shake loose my own edges a bit, to remember what it felt like to inhabit someone else’s skin on purpose. A small, secret hope tucked inside this decision, too: maybe this would reopen something creatively, or at least remind me that I am not just one self, stuck on one track.
She was the kind of person you’d assume had everything under control. A known actor with a recent Netflix role, returning to her craft after time away. She carried what looked like a berry smoothie — dark purple, very wholesome — and sipped it throughout class. Except the smell told a different story.
After class, a friend picked me up to go to the beach. I tried to explain what had happened in that confused way you do when you’re still half convinced you imagined the whole thing. I didn’t say who she was. I just kept circling around the fact of it: “And it was ten in the morning!”
Later that night, still unsettled, I drafted a short email to the head acting school teacher. Careful, almost apologetic. I wasn’t accusing her of anything; I just… didn’t know what to do with the information. I hit send, regretted being that earnest student who “brings things up,” and went to bed. By morning, I had a reply. It said I was making “very serious allegations,” which is the kind of phrase that makes you feel both scolded and slightly gaslit. I closed my laptop and told myself to drop it. Fine. Whatever. Maybe I was overreacting.
Over the next six weeks, there was a pattern. She’d slip out “for a coffee” or “to use the bathroom” right before her turn to perform, and come back looser, warmer, more emotionally elastic. She could give these huge, convincing performances — crying, shouting, collapsing — but something about them felt off. And I kept thinking, in that uncomfortable way you think the thing you don’t want to think: Is she showing up to actual paid work like this? Is this just… normal?
The part that really stayed with me was the recognition of the dynamic underneath it. The quiet splitting from oneself. The subtle, daily ways people disconnect just enough to get through whatever their life requires of them.
Not always with alcohol. Sometimes, with edibles. More often, it’s things like keeping yourself too busy to notice you’re unhappy, or telling yourself a story that makes a relationship seem “fine,” or eating in that way that feels like both comfort and punishment.
The constant hum of distraction, or getting very invested in “being productive,” or deciding that honesty is optional if it keeps things smooth. All the tiny, acceptable ways we avoid being fully present with our own lives.
Most people live like this. It’s not a moral failing. It’s a lack of awareness. A kind of spiritual autopilot. Some people live inside the roles they inherited, and others rewrite the script. Some people pretend a life, and others create one.
And the latter — the creators — are the ones I think of as practical dreamers.
A practical dreamer is someone who understands that dreaming without doing is self-indulgent and doing without dreaming is pointless. They are people who keep their heads in the clouds, yes, but with their feet solidly planted on the ground. They refuse to separate beauty from utility, vision from labour, desire from action. They inhabit both their aspirations and their realities with equal care, even when one terrifies them, and the other bores them.
Now, in this cultural moment, the stakes are higher. So many people spend their days worried that AI will steal something essential from them: their jobs, their livelihoods, the delicate illusion that they are in control of anything at all.
It is possible, but only if you are passive.
If you are operating on autopilot, if you are waiting for someone — a boss, a system, a timeline — to tell you what your life should look like. Because the only way to remain alive, relevant, and whole is to choose your life. To choose it in all its contradiction and uncertainty, in all its mess and joy. To embrace your interiority, your curiosity, your irrational impulses, your instincts, and your mistakes, and to act anyway. The only way to outperform a machine is to be aggressively human.
What is more human than to be the creator of your life? No machine can do that for you.
Entrepreneurship is one way to be a creator. It is about asserting yourself in the world in alignment with what you know, with what you are capable of, with what only you can offer. Freelancers, mentors, portfolio careerists, boutique founders, artists who monetise their craft, consultants who build their own frameworks, all of these are entrepreneurs. All of these are people who refuse to wait for permission, who choose to generate value from their own skills, curiosities, and insights.
Entrepreneurship is spiritual because it forces you to confront yourself. It forces you to notice where you hide, where you lie, where you numb, and it asks you to act anyway. It forces you to take responsibility for the way you show up as a human, as someone whose labour is not just transactional but creative, generative, alive. It illuminates your weaknesses and strengths and asks you to work with them, to outsource, to collaborate, to ask for help, to become stronger in the ways that matter most.
I am, by most definitions, the most unlikely entrepreneur. I do not follow trends. I do not invest in long-term content plans or rigid business strategies. I believe in changing my mind, repeatedly, until I find the approach that feels right for me. I believe in knowing myself deeply — Jungian style — so that when I claim my value in the world, it is not borrowed, copied, or acted, but entirely mine.
I believe in noticing what excites me, what makes my pulse quicken, what pulls me forward, and letting that guide me. I believe in trusting the process, even when certainty is impossible, because certainty is an illusion and clarity is built through iteration, through showing up, through experimentation.
I believe that the person you should always invest in most is yourself.
My own life — the way I structure it, inhabit it, show up in it — is my most powerful client magnet. It demonstrates that a life built on curiosity, attention, intention and deliberate action works. That it is possible. That it is magnetic. It proves that what I teach is not theory; it is practice.
Perhaps why Practical Dreamer sold out so, so quickly. So quickly, I opened up new spaces starting next year. And why many clients move on to rolling monthly mentoring programs, working together for six months to a year to build lives that are aligned, generative, and resonant.
For anyone new to my work, go here. Spaces are limited, and the first step is simply to reach out and start the conversation.
a gentle Paris vlog, plus words and thoughts on the challenges of this year
NOV 26, 2025
A slow, tender glimpse into a couple of my weeks in Paris…
Come with me to a meeting in the centre of the city, witness an unexpected rainbow, and join me for a handful of honest chats about life lately. I share my approach to wrinkle prevention and my boundaries around phone use, why I started my business in the first place, and how it’s evolving in ways I never expected. I also discuss what it’s really like navigating female friendships as an introverted adult.
I also open up about the season I’m in: intentionally reshaping my social circle, letting certain relationships go, and sitting in that in-between space where things haven’t yet fallen into place. It can feel lonely and disorienting… but also deeply beautiful, empowering, and necessary. This is the heart of taking responsibility for our lives… the exact work I teach inside CLEAR.
If you’re in a similar chapter, or simply curious about the behind-the-scenes of my days, I hope this vlog feels grounding, comforting, and human.
Hey love,
I will share more soon as I continue to emerge from the shell of this year.
For those of you, who are also starting to dust off the ashes and rise from them… this is the literal tail end of it, an extremely difficult 2025.
I am so confident in our collective grace, changeability, softness and flexible resilience. We have passed through so much. The gift lives in the pain.
Here is to our rising. To a new season of life ahead.
A few notes:
PRACTICAL DREAMER has been unexpectedly popular and almost sold out, with one spot left. Let me know if you want it by replying to this email.
An 8-step journey through The Repattern Process: a method for rewiring subconscious patterns, dissolving inherited conditioning, and returning to your most authentic self. When you clear what no longer serves you, life naturally rearranges itself to match who you’ve become.
This is not about “manifesting” in the trendy sense but about energetic precision and alignment. When your beliefs, emotions, and actions align, reality responds. Effortlessly.
8/8 — the eighth rule of her way club (aka: how to change your life in 6-12 months)
NOV 11, 2025
The final of our 8 rules of her way club series. If you’re just joining, begin here:
1/8— deciding to play by your own rules 2/8 — subtracting what doesn’t belong 3/8 — the natural consequence: uncertainty interlude — her way deep rest 4/8 — trust yourself 5/8 — inner life 6/8 — outer life 7/8 — life design 8/8 — creator
walking through the streets on errands yesterday
Yellow-gold leaves fall like snow outside my window, drifting in gentle spirals before surrendering to the earth. Nature is shifting from outward display to inward repair, from the urgency of life to the humility of dying. Inside my body, a similar transition is underway. The lining of my womb is dissolving, shedding, releasing itself through me. There is a tenderness in this inner autumn; a sense of being thinned out, emptied, more bone than blossom.
On days like this, I feel less like a creator and more like those leaves outside: untethered, weightless, caught in forces larger than myself. Creation feels distant, like a memory it has temporarily forgotten.
And yet… I know this perception is only half the truth. Because in the very same moment that life inside me is breaking down, life is also preparing to renew. What looks like loss is, in fact, nature reorganising itself. What feels like death is the unspoken prelude to emergence.
This is the essential paradox of existence: two opposing truths held in one body, one moment, one heart. We are both the falling leaf and the seed beneath the soil. We are endings and beginnings, decay and future possibility, all at once. Maturity, real maturity, is learning to live inside that tension without collapsing into either. To honour the ache, and yet trust the regeneration.
If you are anything like me — porous, perceptive, shaped by instinct and feeling — you have likely sensed a similar shedding on a global scale. Something in the ‘old world,’ the one many of us were taught to obey, is splitting at its seams. Systems that once seemed stable now reveal their fragility. Ideals we inherited are dissolving, and the scaffolding of what we were told to trust is quietly shaking itself apart.
Which is why choosing to become a creator is so imperative right now. What is really happening is that humanity is quietly rearranging its resources. And you are a vital part of that.
I don’t believe this is a collapse. I believe it is a rearrangement. A redistribution of attention, energy, power, possibility. Humanity is composting its outdated structures and beliefs, and whether you feel ready or not, you are part of that metamorphosis.
Which is why choosing to become a creator: not merely a consumer, observer, or critic, is not optional anymore. It is essential.
Creation is a way of relating to life. A discipline of perception. A willingness to meet the world as an active participant rather than a passive witness. To create is to engage: with your thoughts, your desires, your environment, your body.
Every choice you make, every emotion you metabolise rather than outsource, every space you shape, every idea you dare to hold… these are acts of creation. Quiet ones, often unseen, but foundational.
By this point in this 8-part series, you have already stripped away the noise. You have practised discernment. You have learned what no longer deserves your time, your energy, your belief. You have strengthened the inner ground that makes outer integrity possible. All of that was preparation for this final threshold: stepping into your life as a creator.
Creation is not linear. It is cyclical, like the body, like the seasons, like breath itself. To create is to stay in conversation with who you are, who you are becoming, and the mystery that moves through and beyond both. You are never shaping your life alone. You are co-crafting it with uncertainty, with intuition, with timing, with forces that are ancient and wise and not always rational.
Real creation asks something intimate and courageous of you: coherence.
The willingness to bring your inner life into alignment with your outer actions. The bravery to trust what you feel before you have proof. The devotion to act even when the path ahead remains partly obscured. Creation is less about control and more about participation. A dance between intention and surrender, vision and mystery, action and grace.
We do not create because we are certain. We create because it is the only honest response to being alive.
Being a creator begins with your personal ideal lifestyle. This is the first lens through which all your choices, projects, and decisions must pass. By now, you have an inkling of what that looks and feels like.
It is not just a set of routines; it is the container that supports your creativity, your energy, your relationships, and your work. It is a framework for how you move through your days and weeks, a blueprint for how you honour your body, your mind, and your desires. Before you make a decision that could impact your future, you consult with your ideal lifestyle. You ask yourself, “Does this align with the life I want to live? Does this support my growth, my energy, my joy?”
Creation also requires radical responsibility. This is the part that most people resist. It is easier to blame circumstances, wait for permission, or hope that someone else will shape your life for you. But creators know that the only power they can fully claim is their own. You take responsibility for your mind, your body, and your environment. You choose your thoughts, you manage your energy, and you shape the spaces you inhabit. And you do it continuously, intentionally, with courage and curiosity.
not linear at all…
The path of a creator is not linear.
You will encounter problems. Infinite problems. But every problem is soluble, and each is an opportunity. Problems are the curriculum of your life. Solve the problem in front of you. Learn. Grow. Share your solution with others. Repeat. Life becomes an ongoing laboratory where progress and contribution converge. Happiness is a byproduct of solving meaningful problems. Joy arises when your skills meet a challenge, and your work serves something greater than yourself.
Humans are tool builders. From the moment we learned to make fire, to the invention of the wheel, to the creation of the internet, we have transformed our environment through creativity. It is our most fundamental skill. And yet so many people never take the time to recognise that this skill extends to the life they live.
Becoming a creator is central to a good life, because it is through creation that you experience progress, purpose, and contribution. Every time you solve a problem for yourself or for others, you grow stronger, wiser, and more capable of tackling increasingly complex challenges.
Being a creator is both intensely practical and deeply spiritual. You take the reins of your life, but you also recognise the presence of forces larger than yourself. There is a mystery, a flow, a life energy that cannot be forced, only leaned into. Creation is the dance of holding on and letting go. You set the stage, cultivate your resources, and take action, but you allow life to meet you halfway. There is grace in that surrender, and strength in that presence.
To make this tangible, here is how I recommend stepping into creation:
Start with lifestyle. Map out your ideal day, week, and month. Where do you want to spend your time? How do you want to feel? What relationships, work, and activities support that vision? Compare this to your current reality, and identify the gaps. Every adjustment, no matter how small, is a creative act.
Shift your mind. Begin noticing the stories you tell yourself, the patterns that hold you back, and the beliefs that no longer serve you. Replace them with curiosity, experimentation, and a commitment to problem-solving.
Take care of your body. Energy is the currency of creation. What you eat, how you move, how you rest—all of it matters. Creation requires vitality, not just motivation.
Curate your environment. Your spaces influence your thinking and your actions. Choose surroundings, tools, and people that elevate you. Remove what drains you. Design an environment that reflects your values, your rhythm, and your vision.
Solve a problem, share a solution. Pick one thing that matters to you. Identify the problem, create a solution, and release it into the world. Repeat. This is the engine of creation, and the path toward impact and independence.
Seek support where it accelerates growth. Courses, mentorship, and community do not replace your agency; they amplify it. They allow you to shortcut the trial and error, integrate ideas faster, and find others walking parallel paths. They are accelerators, not crutches.
Creation is not about perfection. It is about alignment. It is about being awake, aware, and active in the process of building a life that is yours. It is a practice of presence, of integrity, and of courage. And it is infinitely rewarding, because each problem you solve, each solution you share, and each step you take toward your vision is a step into freedom, joy, and mastery.
The time is now. The stakes are everything. Your life is waiting, ready to be shaped by your choices, your attention, and your care. This is where being a creator begins.
You don’t need to join a community, take a course, or seek mentorship to get where you are going. You could do it alone: slowly, quietly, piecing yourself together through trial and intuition. Many people do, and there is nothing wrong with that path. But in my lived experience, support doesn’t replace your power; it accelerates your evolution. It adds oxygen, perspective, and momentum to the fire you are already tending.
We resist guidance not because we don’t value growth, but because it requires effort to integrate, to act, to change. Transformation asks something of us. It isn’t passive. It doesn’t happen from thinking alone. The discomfort people feel around learning containers is rarely about the container. It is about the part of us that fears our own expansion. Because to grow is to become responsible for a bigger life.
Yet community, mentorship, education… these are some of the most life-altering investments we can make. Information becomes embodiment. Insight becomes behaviour. Aspiration becomes lived reality. We pay for accelerated becoming.
I was reminded of this in a way I didn’t ask for. If you’ve been here with me through this past year, you know I walked through the most painful and disorienting breakup and rapid change of circumstances in my life. A rupture that rearranged my world from the inside out. I trusted I would heal — I always do — but I also knew I wasn’t willing to drag the grief behind me for months. So I found help. I chose support in devotion to my future self.
With the right guidance, what could have taken a year unfolded in four months; not rushed, not bypassed, but metabolised with clarity, compassion, and pace. That experience crystallised a truth I already knew in my bones: life moves faster, more gracefully, when you allow yourself to be supported.
We are entering a new era. One where creators are not just artists or entrepreneurs, but the sense-makers, the bridges, the ones translating chaos into meaning and possibility. In a world that is shedding old structures and outdated authority, people look not to static systems, but to humans they trust: those a few steps ahead, living what they teach, offering perspective, skills, and orientation in real time. It’s about resonance and proximity to truth.
If you feel the pull to build these capacities — to become someone who can shape meaning, lead yourself, create value, and root deeply into your vision — I share resources, pathways, and invitations. High-value skills. Creative confidence. Nervous system leadership. The inner and outer muscles of a self-directed life.
You don’t have to walk into the next season alone. You can; you are fully capable. But you don’t have to. And there is a particular magic in choosing support not because you are collapsing, but because you are rising.
For those ready to step into your next iteration, in Her Way Club, I offer pathways to accelerate your becoming:
Her Way Club Community — $33/month A gentle container to practice habits, stay connected to your vision, and build momentum through small, meaningful steps alongside women walking a similar path.
CLEAR— special opening price $150; increasing to $200 A practical and self-honest process for identifying the patterns, beliefs, and behaviours that are holding you back, and shifting into a more aligned, empowered way of moving through the world.
Practical Dreamer — $1,800 A two-month mentorship for women ready to turn their ideas into tangible expression. This is where vision meets structure, where dreams become plans, and where you build confidence through real progress and accountability.
1:1 Business Mentoring— starting at $1,250 For the woman ready to build a values-led, creatively fulfilling, financially aligned business — one that honours her rhythm, her expertise, and her deepest calling. This is intimate, strategic support to craft offers, refine messaging, and build a business that feels like you.
Ongoing Private Mentorship — by application, enquire within For those who desire close support as they evolve, create, and lead in alignment with who they truly are. This is a private, personalised journey where we go deep, build steadily, and expand your life, your work, and your inner world together.
Becoming a creator is a lifelong journey, but the first step is conscious action. You have everything you need to begin, and every problem you face is part of your curriculum. Show up, experiment, share, and trust yourself. Your life is your creation, and the world is waiting to receive it.
7/8 — the seventh rule of her way club (aka: how to change your life in 6-12 months)
OCT 26, 2025
Continuing our 8 rules of her way club series. If you’re just joining, begin here:
1/8— deciding to play by your own rules 2/8 — subtracting what doesn’t belong 3/8 — the natural consequence: uncertainty interlude — her way deep rest 4/8 — trust yourself 5/8 — inner life 6/8 — outer life 7/8 — life design
at Art Basel Paris 2025 yesterday, predictably admiring the way the light hits the floor, which is not technically part of the art exhibition
This week, I am tired. The kind of fatigue that comes when your nervous system finally gets permission to stop holding it all together. After months of spinning my wheels, leaving New York, hovering in uncertainty about where and when I would land, it finally happened.
I found an apartment in Paris. A frantic search, hopeful messages that went unanswered, some near-misses and a false start later, I moved in. The first week disappeared in a blur of unpacking and catching up on everything that had been urgent and waiting. Work deadlines, emails, small domestic details like finding where to buy detergent. I needed to land and find my pace again: a work rhythm, a home rhythm, a sense of myself inside this new city. And all of it caught up with me.
By Thursday, I was dragging myself from one meeting to the next, still pretending I wasn’t running on fumes. On Friday, I tried to fill my creative cup by going to Art Basel with a new friend. It was beautiful, but after a few hours I felt overstimulated, so I went home. I started watching the first season of Andor with my headphones on while epilating my legs and underarms, reclaiming my body from the world. I showered, moisturised, and climbed into bed by seven. An exhale I’d been holding for months.
Even in my exhaustion, I am still delighted by the smallest things: the washing machine in my apartment (a luxury after nyc), waking up and looking out of my cliché Parisian window to see the opposite windows and rooftops, hearing the hum of the city around me. I love working on my own schedule and earning a living doing work I love and believe in.
Which brings me to the seventh rule of Her Way Club: life design.
You are always creating your life. Every thought, every choice, every habit is a creative act. The only difference between those who create consciously and those who don’t is awareness. When you bring what has been unconscious into the light, your creativity becomes aligned: with truth, with pleasure, with peace, with purpose.
I have created a life that I am genuinely proud of. Through hundreds of small, intentional choices. The life I live now was once just an idea I was shaping: the slow mornings, the freedom to work from anywhere, the ability to follow my seasons instead of forcing myself into someone else’s timeline. My days are simple and full. I wake up slowly, make tea, open the windows to let in air and sound, and write until noon. I take long walks, meet friends, make time for art and beauty, and rest when I need to. This too is work: tending to the inner soil from which all creation grows.
I no longer have to start over every time I change cities or a relationship ends. My sense of security lives inside me. And even while I appreciate what I have created, I am working quietly, diligently to create the next version of my life, the one that will meet the woman I am becoming.
To firstly change and secondly consciously create your life, yourpersonal ideal lifestyle comes first. It means that before you make a decision that could impact your future, you consult with your ideal lifestyle.
ask yourself
I often have to ask myself, “Is this the life I actually want to live?”
Sometimes the answer is no. And when it is I have to adjust. Sometimes I realise I’ve been tempted by dreams and goals that belong to someone else, or I’ve slipped into the comfort of pre-worn tracks, or let social expectations quietly steer me away from what’s truly mine. When that happens, I have to stop and reset my life.
For me, one of life’s greatest luxuries is having the space and time to respond to life in a present, intuitive, moment-to-moment way. It means choosing to operate from a place of spaciousness. For that to be possible, I need to have control over how and where I spend my time. Which means I cannot be beholden to others for my income, environment, or energy.
I share this as an example because it’s true for me, but that doesn’t make it true for you. Across the past six “rules” in this series, I’ve planted seeds for you to begin identifying your own truth. So you can start making decisions about the kind of life you actually want. Maybe some of what I share resonates. Pick out the parts that do.
I encourage you to spend time thinking about what your ideal lifestyle feels like and to reverse-engineer it from there.
create your lifestyle
Here’s a simple exercise to start clarifying your ideal lifestyle and bridging the gap between where you are now and where you want to go.
Get a large piece of blank paper and a pen. A4 will do. That’s usually what I have lying around. Turn it horizontally so the long edge faces up, and draw two lines down the page to divide it into three parts. This doesn’t have to be perfect; you’re creating clarity, not art. (Though if you love beauty like I do, you can turn it into something beautiful later.)
Title each section:
Left third: NOW
Middle: LEAP
Right third: IDEAL LIFESTYLE
Begin at the end. Under IDEAL LIFESTYLE, write in detail what your ideal life looks and feels like.
How do you feel in your body?
How do you like? Body? Style? Image?
How do you begin your day?
What do you spend your time doing?
Where is your focus and attention?
How do you contribute to the world?
What do you receive from the world?
How do you sleep, and with whom?
What is your financial situation?
What are your relationships like?
Who do you spend time with?
What do you love?
How does a day, a week, and a month flow for you?
Add anything else you can think of that you want to include here…
Then return to the beginning. Under NOW, answer those same questions honestly. What does your current lifestyle look like? Where are you out of alignment? Where are you pretending? Be detailed and ruthless in this process, but also kind. This is a moment of radical integrity, not self-judgment.
Pause now. Before your LEAP, you may need a break. It takes strength, courage, and energy to choose the path of radical self-responsibility. You are on the path of becoming a creator, which is the final rule of her way club. This is the time to practice self-compassion. Be generous with yourself. Forgive the versions of you who made choices that weren’t true or kind. We are all doing our best. Now, you have the chance to realign and do better.
life design
Now ask yourself: What needs to change for my life to truly be my own?
Go to the middle section of your page: LEAP.This is where you close the gap between where you are now and the life you’re consciously creating. Identify what shifts need to happen, both internally and externally, for your days and life to begin reflecting your truth. This is where you close the gap between where you are now and the life you are creating for yourself.
I have become quite clear on my ideal lifestyle over the years.
I want to wake up naturally without an alarm — usually between seven and eight am — and drink a cup of tea in bed while looking out the window. I spend two to four hours writing, then get dressed in something that makes me feel gorgeous. I go on walks, meet new people, explore new places, wander through flea and farmers markets, take an exercise class, read new books, build creative projects, eat fresh, local food, watch live music, go dancing, laugh with people I love, go to sleep when I’m tired, and generally feel creative, grateful, inspired, beautiful, and alive.
When that lifestyle is maintained, my mind, body, spirit, and business continue their natural process of evolution and growth becasue they are held by a container of a life that is authentic and feels good to me. When we create the conditions of a good life, nothing but a good life can flourish from there.
Life design is not about having everything figured out or seeing the whole picture. It’s about stepping into the knowing that you are the author of your own life experience, that your choices, beliefs, and perspectives shape your world, and that by taking ownership of them, you begin to live with intention, clarity, and alignment.
